History

They belong to Chandravanshikshatriyas. They come mostly from Naujheel area in district Mathura. Nauhwar and NarwarJats are cousins/brothers. They get Narwar name after Narhari, a great Jat warrior, from Nauhwar clan. Intermarriages are banned in these two gotras. Nauhwars are believed to have originated from village Shall (Salya) in block Naujheel. There are about 100 villages of Nauhwars and 12 of Narwars. In Palwal (Faridabad) area of Haryana they are called Nauhwar-Chauhans. Mr. Cheti Lal Verma of Palwal, a famous rich industrialist, was Nauhwar-Chauhan Jat. Nausherpur in Naujheel district has a population of Nauhwars.

Under the same head comes the apparently Muhammadan name Noh; which, with the addition of the suffix jhil, is the designation of a decayed town on the left bank of the Jamuna to the north of the district. At no very great distance, but on the other side of the river, in Gurgaon, is a second Noh; and a third is in the Jalesar Pargana, which now forms part of the Agra district. So far as I have any certain knowledge, the name is not found in any other part of India; though it occurs in Central Asia; for I learn from Colonel Godwin Austen that there is a Noh in Ladak or rather Rudok at the eastern end of the Pagang Lake, and on its very borders. The Yarkand expedition is also stated in the papers to have reached Leh via Khotan, Kiria, Polu, and Noh, by the easternmost passover the Kuen-lun mountains. Upon this point I may hope to acquire more definite information hereafter, the best maps published up to the present time throw no light on the matter, for though they give the towns of Kiria and Khotan, they do not show Noh, and its existence therefore requires confirmation. The three places in this neighbourhood all agree in being evidently of

[पृ.108]: great antiquity, and also in the fact that each is close to a large sheet of water. The lake, or morass, at Noh Jhil spreads in some years over an area measuring as much as six miles in length by one in breadth. It is no doubt to a great extent of artificial formation, having been excavated for the double purpose of supplying earth, with which to build the fort, and also of rendering it inaccessible when built. The inundated appearance of the country combines with the name to suggest a reminiscence of the Biblical Deluge and the Patriarch Noah. But the proper spelling of his name, as Mr. Blochmann informs me, is Nuh, with the vowel u and the Arabic h, Badaoni, who twice * mentions the town, spells it with the imperceptible h, but in the ain-i-Akbari, which herein agrees with in modern usage, the final letter is the Arabic h. Again, if a reference to the Deluge were intended, the word Noh would not have been used simply by itself - and standing as it does, it can scarcely be other than the name of the founder. But (again to quote Mr. Blochmann) “Muhammadans use the name Nuh extremely rarely. Adam, Musa, Yusuf, and Ayub are common, but on looking over my lists of saints, companions of Muhammad, and other worthies of

*. Once as the scene of a fight between Iqbal Khan and Shams Khan of Bayana (A.H. 802), and again as the place where Mubarak Shah crossed the Jamuna for Jartoli.

[पृ.109]: Islam, I do not find a single person with the name Nuh, and hence I would look upon a connection of Noh with Noah as very problematical. I would rather connect it with the Persian nuh, 'nine' which when lengthened becomes noh, but not nuh, as the Persian dih, 'a village' becomes deh, not dih.” But if we abandon the Semitic name, it will be better, considering the purely Hindu character of the country, to try and fall back upon some Sanskrit root, and I am inclined to regard the name as a Muhammadan corruption of nava - and the adjective meaning 'new' but a proper name - and with the h added either purposely to make the distinction, or inadvertently in the same way as raja is in Persian characters incorrectly written rajah. In the Harivansa (line 1677) mention is made of a king Ushinara, of the family of Kaksheyu, who had five wives, Nriga, Krimi, Nava, Darva, and Drishadvati. They bore him each one son, and the boys were named Nriga, Krimi, Nava, Suvrata and Sivi; of whom Nava reigned over Navarashtram, Krimi, over Kumila-puri; Sivi, who is said to be the author of one of the hymns of the Rig Veda (X.179), over the Sivayas, and Nriga over the Yaudheyas. In the Mahabharat the Usinaras are said to be a lower race of Kshatriyas. They are mentioned by Panini in a connection which seems to imply that they were settled in or near the Punjab; and in the Aitareyas

[पृ.110]: Brahmana, Usinara is collocated with Kuru and Panchala. Again, Drishadvati, the fifth of Usinara's wives, recalls to mind the unknown river of the same name, which is mentioned by Manu as one of the boundaries of Brahmavarta, and in the Mahabharat as the southern boundary of Kurukshetra. From all this it may be inferred that the Navarashtra, over which Usinara's third son Nava reigned, cannot have been far distant from Mathura and Gurganw - and its capital may well have been the very place which still bears his name under the corrupt form of Noh or Nauh.

Atri and Nohwar gotras are also onsidered brotherly gotras and do not marry within each other. There are 80 villages of Atri Jats in Aligarh. Adjoining them in Mathura district are Nohwars, who have 100 villages.